Some of you have shown some interest in our team so I figured I'll send
out the results.
We finished 36th out of the 125 schools that showed up. Also the highest
ranking california school. We know wwe would have done better but with the
circumstances the way they were that wasn't bad.
This was also our third chassis and practically nothing had been carried
over from the previous cars to to very lacking design.
When we arrived the car had still not been fully assembled and the only
driving that had been done was by me just to make sure the brakes worked.
This meant lots of work in our trailer (thanks Geoff) for the first couple
days. The first events of the competition are the "static" events where we
go over our design, cost analysis, and marketing presentations. We didn't
do too good here since getting the car through tech was our first concern
and we didn't have a chance to sit down and review our calculations or
prepare the presentations. After that day most of us had been up for three
days and the delierium of some of the team urged us to get some sleep. All
that was left was do the alignment and get through tech. The plan was get
up at 4:00 am and be in tech line at 7:00 am.
The second day started the dynamic events we missed our alarm clock/wake
up call or whatever it was we set or forgot to set. We got to the site
about 7:30 and took the car striaght to tech with no sort of alignment
done. After haggling and negotiating our way through the first two parts
of tech we got held up at the brake test. Even though all four wheels
would lock up (the brake test requirement) the car pulled to one side and
they wouldn't let us pass. We went back to our trailer quickly set the toe
and rebleed the brakelines and went back and passed the test fine.
But we had to be in line for the acceleration and skidpad events by 10:30
and we didn't get through tech till about noon. From there we had to go to
the autocross event. Me and my co-driver (Courtney Waters, NASA/Fiat club
fame) decided to take the car out on the test track (were theres only
enough room to do donuts) since neither of us had really driven the car.
Both of us put down excellent times on the autocross despite no experience
in the car and no sort of setup or even good alignment on the car. Luckily
Court managed to put down a 81 scratch (fastest was a 75) which got us
31st in the autocross and a 31st place start in the endurance event.
The next day was the endurance event and not having any test time before
the event we decided not to screw with the set up since the car was
surprisingly forgiving and handled pretty good. We ran good in the
endurance but had a few set backs/lessons for next year. The seat pad
hadn't been made for me and Court so we were sitting on the seat frame
which wasn't especially comfortable. I had to sit in the car ready to go
for about an hour and so I was getting sore before we even go out on
track. This resulted in me being extremely fatigued after about 8 or 9
laps of the 11 lap segment I had to drive. Spending most of last year in
front of a computer doing calculations and analysis instead of going to
the gym didn't help that much either. When Court took over to drive the
second half of the endurance event it started raining so his first few
laps were wet. Then we found out that our gas tank didn't have enough
baffling so that coming out of hard corners caused the engine to sputter.
But we finished the event without any real problems.
Well sorry for the long story. Theres more but I think thats the exciting
parts. Now we get to enjoy "testing" the car and ofcourse its time to
build the 2003 car. We'll probably be out at the next Sac event and as
many of the SFR events as we can trailer it to.
Ian Green
Team Leader
Formula SAE
University of California, Davis
http://mae.ucdavis.edu/~fsae
CSCC,SFR STS 99
1997 Honda Civic CX
www.geocities.com/stscxr
|